Look at this bus stop, this bridge and this playground. Notice anything? Let's take another look. They're all made of wind turbine blades. Because it looks cool, yeah. But also because we don't really know what else to do with them once they're worn out. We can recycle up to 90% of a turbine – like the steel from the tower or the copper from all the wires. But the gigantic blades... mostly get dumped into landfills. A field day for opponents of wind energy, "...the big wind turbine junkyard!" "They're just lying around!" "There's nothing much renewable about these things..." But the wind industry won't let that stand. They're working on making wind turbine blades recyclable – and saving their green image. "If it's as good as people say, it's going to be absolutely transformative." The big question is... can they? And what difference would it make? The Chinese wind energy company Mingyang recently bragged about this new wind turbine – the largest in the world. They say it's got a rotor diameter of 260 meters, making each blade a good bit taller than the Statue of Liberty. Of course, this is an extreme example. But even for your run-of-the-mill wind turbine – pardon the pun – these things are massive. And extremely sturdy. "They're designed to be strong and last through all sorts of weather conditions for 20, 25, 30 years." This is Aubryn Cooperman, an engineer who studies the entire life cycle of wind turbines. Wind turbine blades are mainly made of glass or carbon fibers and stuff called epoxy resin. This acts like a plastic superglue that binds them together. You end up with a very strong and resilient material. And that's great when the blades are up and running... "...but separating those components, we can't easily do." This is Claire Barlow who's spent 30 years researching how to best recycle all kinds of materials. "And that's really been the problem here. We've got these huge wind turbine blades. But we've got difficult to recycle materials because they're all combined." We started putting up wind turbines in larger numbers throughout the 1990s. This first wave of blades is now being retired. The easiest – and most common – way to deal with them is to simply chuck them into landfills. And this might sound horrible, but it's actually not that bad... more on that later. In future, the piles of spent blades are only going to grow. We're putting up more and more wind turbines for good reasons: They deliver some of the cheapest and cleanest electricity that's available to us. But that also means that by 2050 we'll have an estimated 43 million metric tons of retired blades on our hands. Dumping them into landfills and forgetting about them is a massive waste of materials. So let's look at some ideas on how to stop it. One way to deal with old blades is by using brute force. We can burn off the plastic part, or use strong chemicals to dissolve it. What remains is the fiber that can be used to make new things, like cars, planes or snowboards. But these processes aren't perfect. "All of these take a lot of energy. And the products that you get – because they're degraded by the very fierce technology that you've been using, by the brutal methods that you've been using to separate the components – they're not as strong, not as useful as they were. And so you don't get so much value from them. Any recycling process has to be economically viable – and this erodes that." Recently, a different approach has become popular. Turns out the materials in turbine blades are pretty good for making something else. If they're cut into pieces and then shredded, they can be used in cement production. "You get some energy from the plastic part of the blade, the resin. As that is heated, it gives off energy and then you're left with this charred glass remains and that goes into concrete. And so you're able to recover some of the materials and use them for a common material. And then you're also able to recover some energy." Waste management firm Veolia has partnered with General Electric to do exactly that on a large scale in the US. They say they've already recycled over 3,000 blades this way. And that's not the only benefit. By burning shredded wind turbine blades instead of coal, cement makers could save up to 27% of CO2 emissions, according to an analysis by a consulting firm. "If you have cement industry which is located close enough to the place that you've got your wind turbine blades, then this is actually something which is viable. It's economically advantageous and it's environmentally favorable as well." And certainly better than the landfill. But wouldn't it be better still, if we could use old turbine blades to make new ones? "We really need to ensure that we get into circularity and get into more sustainable life cycle designs." This is Maximilian Schnippering who leads the sustainability department at Siemens Gamesa, one of the world's largest wind turbine manufacturers. They developed what they call the RecyclableBlade, which you might have guessed, is a blade that's supposed to be easily recyclable. That's down to a new type of resin they've invented. This resin can be dissolved easily in a mild acid solution at the end of life. And then this solution basically separates the resins from the glass fiber and the other core materials, so that we can recover the separated materials again and use them for new products." For the moment these new products are things like suitcases, PC cases or cars – not new blades. The plan is to ultimately close the loop. But more research is still needed. "It's just… there hasn't been enough time to really validate that the blade has the same performance over the same period of time. And that it can practically be recycled at that large scale. So I think those are the next challenges to demonstrate all those things at scale." The recyclable blades are more expensive than traditional ones. How much exactly, Siemens Gamesa wouldn't say. But they’re already being used in some wind projects. Unfortunately, Siemens Gamesa also wouldn't say how high the share of total sales is. "Yeah, that's something we cannot disclose." Which is a shame. Because, obviously, the more of them we use now, the more of a dent in blade waste this solution could make down the line. What's clear is that it doesn't help with "traditional blades" we have to deal with NOW. "You will not see the impact of that until 25 or 30 years when those blades are being taken down." This is Lisa Ekstrand who's head of sustainability at Vestas, another leading wind turbine manufacturer. They're taking a different approach in their recycling strategy. "As soon as we have scaled up our solution, we can already start recycling epoxy-infused blades that were put up many years ago and that will be taken down now as well as future blades." They say they figured out a way to separate the materials in existing turbine blades and make them reusable, including the epoxy resin. It's supposedly done with a chemical solution that breaks it down. "It would mean that it could be worth digging up turbine blades which have been buried in landfill and reusing those, as well as all the ones which are now coming on-stream in exponentially increasing quantities. That's the great hope for the future." Vestas doesn't let on much about their new process. Just that so far, it's only been proven in the lab. They'll now be testing it in the real world for two years to see if it can be scaled up. "What we do know is that the chemical solution is nothing exotic. It's chemicals that you will find off the shelf. And that, of course, gives us very good indications that this has a lot of opportunities to be very cost-competitive." So let's recap. There's a bunch of ideas out there on how to tackle blade waste. Some that already work at scale and some that still have to prove they do. Wind power companies across the board are throwing money at this. And while researching this story, I've repeatedly wondered... WHY??? If you ask them, they'll say something like this: "...sustainability is at the core of our business..." "...it is also very much part of our DNA..." Which somehow only felt like half the answer. I mean, don't get me wrong... Throwing things in the dump and forgetting about all the materials that went into making them should NOT be the way forward. But with old blades, it looks and feels a lot worse than it is. I mean, these things are literally built to not decompose. "They should be pretty stable, they will just stay there basically forever." "The main problem with landfilling is really that blades take up a lot of space." You remember I said there will be 43 million tons of discarded blades by 2050? Well, there will be 12 billion tons of plastic waste in landfills and the environment by then... If we drown in waste, it's very likely NOT going to be down to wind turbine blades. But that's not the point. "Compared with plastic waste it's tiny. Compared with lots of other bits of waste it's tiny. But it's really important in the public eye. It's sort of iconic. So we've got these huge wind turbines which are making green electricity for us, and people say: 'Yes, but at the end of life, you've got parts of this structure which are going to landfill – that is NOT green! So, it's partly really to improve the image of wind turbine technology in the public domain." And that's the other bit of the answer. Any blemish in its green credentials makes wind power an easy target for those who want to discredit it. "Look at all the waste we have with big wind!" "This renewable energy, isn't renewable at all!" For the wind industry, solving the recycling challenge is the best way to live up to their image and future-proof their business. "So what do you think? How should we deal with old wind turbine blades? Let us know in the comments. And don't forget to hit subscribe for more videos like this."
